


Point of fact: Sigyn is a verb.

by Keenir



Series: Learning curve folder [6]
Category: Norse Mythology, Thor (Movies)
Genre: Asgard has traditions too, Gen, Post Avengers Asgard
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-21
Updated: 2013-07-21
Packaged: 2017-12-20 12:05:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,637
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/887073
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Keenir/pseuds/Keenir
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Much of the time, Sif is alone with the prisoner Loki.  When she does get visitors, they find a mirror to themselves.  But mostly it is just her alone with her thoughts as she tends to Loki in his suffering.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Point of fact: Sigyn is a verb.

_The myths got that wrong,_ Sif knows: Loki does not writhe. _Yet another false detail. If he writhed, he would dislocate or lose an arm, maybe a hand._ And there were times, she knew, when Loki's thoughts seemed to be inclined that such would not be a terrible idea.

She picks at the left ankle's knot, letting her ring and pinky fingers slide against Loki's bare skin, offering what little comfort she could - a mental salve, touch. A balm to the both of them, and a promise of **what might be** at the end of the containment period.

Neither Aesir nor Jotnar were descended from primates, but they hailed from creatures which appreciated physical contact just as much as those ancestors of humans.

This is all they have for the longest time. Day and night, week and month, year and decade; the borders blur into one another. More than anything else, these momentary contacts are what keep then saneish.

  


* * *

Loki's punishment by and among the Midgardrs, the people of Earth, had been consecutive punishments totalling somewhere between two and three hundred years; the precise number was a quibble in this deep depth of a holding place. Initially, SHIELD had refused to accept the help of Asgard, insisting SHIELD had facilities adequate to the task of holding Loki. _But they soon learned the difficulty in keeping Loki any place he does not wish to be;_ Nick Fury had been quite right in Loki having been the only one who *wanted* to be in the flying fortress, caged or not.

 _When we were brought in, the first thing we did -_ Sif did - _was to remove Loki's gag. For us, it was not required._

For one, they had the binding. For another, they had Sif.

Thor had tried to persuade Sif to not enter captivity, but his were half-hearted words, empty and known by himself to be that. _He still has enough care for Loki that he does not wish to learn what battered creature would emerge from here, were Loki in here alone,_ Sif knew. There had been no line forming to volunteer for this service, "but then," Thor had boomed full of approval, "you never did seek that which is popular." _Except to be a warrior,_ she knew.

  


* * *

Many of the children on Asgard play at being Odin, reenacting the Allfather's deeds. Loki was no different in that regard, tying his wrists to a pole - or, once, to Idunn's apple trees, with only Odin understanding that for once the boy was not there for mischief.

 _And now you are here,_ thought Sif, her fingers smoothing across his brow in a rare minute of inactivity on the binding's part.

At the start of all this, when the work of these bindings had been explained to her, Thor's Jane had spoken excitedly about a paradox coined by a Midgardr by the name of Heisenberg. Loki was held tight by craftings which were certain to grow tighter and pull harder when it was not being watched.

That was when Sif came over to loosen the drawn pulling-rope and to untie new knots and old, but never able to get them all - there were too many to finish, and on those occassions when she was on the verge of freeing one limb, the binding redoubled its efforts on the other three limbs. Around and around she goes, a monstrous mockery of **duck, duck, goose** that near-eternally lacks the larger bird.

  


* * *

The binding is no mere rope, though many call it that. The binding is an improvement upon and an updated form of mighty Glepnir, who holds tight on the beast at the mouth of a certain river.

She tries not to take it personally, no matter how difficult that is. While none can fault the Dwarves for continuing to advance their skills and hone their craft ever further, oh how it rankles that she and her family can never escape the reach of this form of technology. _It cost my father his hand, and it is costing me this. To say nothing of how long Loki will require for recovery in the afterwards._

Were it a living thing, Sif would have ended the binding's existence by now. Would brutalize it so severely, as the Midgardr say, 'things that look like it are gonna be in a world of pain.'

  


* * *

Unlike her mythical equivalent, Sif has visitors. Never more than one at a time. Almost never staying for very long. They are fireflies over the open ocean: glimpses of something other than the abyssal sameness routine (and the blessed touches) that always go away far too soon, but then what else can you expect from insects?

At Sif's request, Jane read a book of Norse myths to her, always pausing when Sif laughed so hard she had tears. They had more success with a heavy book on the history of bladed weapons. Three tries at Lord of the Rings were interupted by Loki's deliberate impressions of Gollum, and by Sif vowing to unmake the binding just as the One Ring was unmade.

  


* * *

"I'm unkillable, can't die," Steve had said when asked why he was present; after Sif's inquiry of if he wished her to correct that flaw, Steve said "Everyone else here is going to be dead in a century or so, maybe except Dr. Banner, I'm not sure. So, my point is, if Loki's still here, you're still here, I will be to," he said as he thought, _And I know what its like to be made into something else and coming to terms with the difference. I vented my stress by punching Hitlers and all the little Hydra agents; stuck on the sidelines even a fraction of how long he was? That's why I found myself punching Hitler over and over and over._

  


* * *

"There but for the grace of God go me and Tony," Pepper had explained to Sif once. After a while of being on the receiving end of Sif's half-amused look, Pepper explained: "If Tony had cleaned himself up and then opted to be a super-villain, I like to think I'd take a stand and leave him...but I know, deep down, that I'd have stuck with him like I always have. So Tony would be lying here or wherever they found for him, and I'd be doing what you're doing; trying to ease the suffering of somebody everyone else thinks should suffer." Pepper visits the most, but seems to age the fastest; there are poems on Asgard celebrating the fleetingness of how short are the lives of warriors and Midgardrs - Sif sings it once for her, a form of compensation for her time; Pepper loves it, and Loki is soothed by it.

That makes it worthwhile.

  


* * *

On one visit, something is mentioned to Sif - 

_Oracles proclaimed that whomever could solve the Gordion Knot, would rule the world._  
 _Alexander the Great (of Macedonia) sliced the Knot in half. He died young and of sickness, having conquered only from Egypt to Greece to Afghanistan._

_For centuries afterward, the people of Gordion said that Alexander's fate was the price for cheating._

Sif isn't sure if that was an overestimation regarding Loki's ability to heal, or underestimating it. And she has time aplenty to mull over the other interpretations one could form from that brief history lesson.

  


* * *

Everyone dies in time.

Dies or stops visiting for some other reason.

 _We remember them,_ Sif thinks between untyings. She knows their friends are imprinted on her mind; doesn't know how long until she can no longer access those memories.

  


* * *

Time passes.

  


* * *

Sif sings from time to time, but her voice goes hoarse, and there are only so many songs she knows - even at her age.

  


* * *

Time passes.

  


* * *

Time passes.

  


* * *

He tries mockery, he tries belittling, he strikes at the heart. But Loki has yet to budge her from this room.

He has tried to disgust her with himself, with her, with implications, with innuendos.

Some good days are when Loki can think long enough and clearly enough to say, "Its true, isn't it? Odin is your grandfather. No wonder you had no wish to marry Thor. But me?" and **tsk** ed until the bindings got him screaming. Again. Once more. Back to the pain and the untying. Again. Once more.

  


* * *

Time passes.

  


* * *

He begs, he pleads, he threatens, he bribes. But Loki cannot die. Sif will not let him.

She knows it is cowardly of her, but she cannot lose him.

"They will release you from this prison as soon as you slay me," Loki assures her with all his heart and tenderness. Sometimes he says it in anger and fury, calling himself a monster.

Every time, she can't meet his eyes for at least a day after that, no matter what his mood had been. Not because of him, but because of her.

  


* * *

Time passes.

  


* * *

Time passes.

  


* * *

Sif had been one of the more common visitors to Niflheim, dropping in to share her lessons with someone who was always cheered to see her and loved to learn how to become a warrior. Even if there was no call for warriors in Niflheim. That someone was Hel, who always treated Sif like the more titled one of the two of them.

Hel had once confided to her the reason why Hel never cries: "Once I began, where or why would I stop?" Hel had asked her.

When told, Sif had understood on an intellectual level, an abstract grasp. Now she knows it firsthand, feels the weight of it personally.

What more was there than this world of her, Loki, and the bindings? Now it was the world beyond this room that was the intellectual concept, the abstraction for her.

  


* * *

Time passes.

  


* * *

Time passes.  


what else is there?

  


* * *

The world comes down upon them.

**Author's Note:**

> Yes, half the title is drawn from Dinosaur Train. :)


End file.
